It seems like every week a new contender stands up in an attempt to dethrone the two kings of the Android keyboard hill, Swype and Swiftkey. Given the sheer number of keyboards available, it’s hard to imagine what new apps can do to differentiate themselves – and yet there are many that stand up to the challenge.

The Siine Keyboard Splash Screen and Tutorial

One such recent entrant into the arena is Siine Keyboard. Rather than focusing on the usual word completion or prediction features, though, Siine focuses on helping you type entire phrases with just a few taps. If you find yourself typing similar words or phrases again and again – greetings, quick questions, and so on – Siine might be just right for you… as long as you’re not keen on doing a lot of regular typing. Let’s take a look.

Entering an already crowded category of apps with not one but two distinctleaders can be a tough task. And when you actually go head-to-head and pull away a noticeable chunk of the leaders’ market share, it speaks volumes about the developers’ creativity and commitment to the cause.

The Go Dev team members have time and again proven in the last year that they can prove disruptive in pretty much any category they choose to release an app in, and Go Launcher Ex was the app that really established them.

I have to admit, it was the first launcher I gave a serious look. But even after multiple attempts to try the others out, I’ve found myself coming back to and sticking with Go Launcher Ex.

ADWLauncher EX is the higher-functioning bigger sibling of ADW.Launcher. It comes with a smattering of extra features and is arguably the most customisable alternative launcher available on Android.

Personally, I came to use ADWLauncher EX very late indeed; after being smitten with LauncherPro for a while, but disappointed when the development on that launcher ceased, I went looking for something else and found ADWLauncher EX. I remain completely open to new launchers and persist in trying new ones out. However, time and time again I always return to ADWLauncher EX. Why do I do this? Why keep coming back? Read on for more…

Nuance Communications Inc. are a company specialising in voice recognition software. Many of you may be familiar with their Dragon line of computer software, superb pieces of kit that write your spoken words on-screen in real time.

Their new program for Android, Dragon Go, isn’t exactly the same sort of software. It’s a searching and browsing application that uses your voice to interpret your queries. So is this application as impressive as Nuance’s desktop product? Let’s find out.

Launcher 7 offers an interesting alternative among the wide world of Android launchers. Taking a page from Microsoft’s book, it mimics Windows Phone 7, giving users a simple, tile-based interface. I spent a few weeks with it as my daily driver and although I am a diehard Android fan, it did more than just change how my phone worked. It made me want a Windows Phone.(more…)

“What time is it?” A simple question, right? If someone asked you the time, what would you look at? I’m sure that most of you have a watch, but if you are here reading you probably look at your smartphone more often. Like most of our possessions we want to customize it and make it beautiful – so why not make the time and weather more pleasing to your eyes?(more…)

Ever been frustrated at a laggy virtual keyboard? Thanks to years of experience with hardware keyboards, my typing fingers are blazing fast, and many on-screen keyboards just can’t keep up. On top of that, the stock keyboard is pretty bland, and the auto-correct isn’t so correct! I’m sure I’m not the only one: I wanted to say something, the built-in guess was terrible, and without a thought I sent that text. Whoops.

But there are a lot of keyboards out there, and maybe you’ve used so many different ones that the perfect match feels as evasive as a unicorn.

In that case, rejoice! SwiftKey X has been revamped and is here to ease your texting, tweeting, emailing and posting troubles. Available for handset and tablet, it works with a library of your previous input – based on your texts and emails – so that it can guess your next word.

This is usually the first thing people ask when they hear about Wolfram Alpha: how it compares to Google Search. Though both are, at first glance, a search box, both are very different, in one way and yet totally similar in another! It’s very confusing, so let me clear this up.

With Google, when you’re searching for something, you usually don’t expect Google itself to know the answer – although with some simpler searches this is starting to change; try searching [weather] on your phone. While Google typically gets its results from external sources, Wolfram Alpha generally either knows the information itself, or works it out. (more…)